PAP 57: Jo Whitton – Healthy life, happy balance and asking for help

Jo Whitton ladies and ladies!  Does she need any introduction?  If you are like me and most of the people I know the words Quirky Cooking will have been lovingly recommended to you by a fellow Thermomix owner or healing foods friend – right?

I am so grateful to Jo for providing not only providing delicious easy to prepare family-friendly meals but also for creating a community of fellow Quirkies in the Quirky Cooking Chat Group.  Jo is real and sincere, open and honest, ethical and caring and she makes herself available for support and advice helping many on their journey to reclaiming their health.

But, she also has four kids and a healing journey of her own and her kid’s healing journeys too!  So how on earth does she do it? How does she have the energy and drive to keep showing up on our social media feeds day after day for over ten years?

Toward the end of last year Jo gave me permission to get some help around the home so that I could free up my time to spend doing what I am good at – being with my family and working on my business Primal Alternative.  There is some resistance around us women asking for help, paying for help.  We are almost considered less noble if we do.  But at what cost?  I was trying to do all the things and keep all the plates spinning at the cost of my own health and stress levels.

So I invited Jo onto the show to share her secrets of success without burn out and to give you the permission to get the help you need in your life. Whatever that may look like for you.

Jo Whitton lives with her family in Far North Queensland, Australia, where she runs Quirky Cooking from home and enjoys the country life. Growing up, Jo struggled with health issues such as frequent colds, histamine reactions, tummy upsets, food intolerances, blood sugar fluctuations, hormone problems, acne, and being chronically underweight. As she got older her health grew worse, and her children also began to have similar issues. Jo began researching ways to improve their health through diet, experimenting with alternate ingredients and allergy-friendly versions of family favourites. Their health began to improve, and in 2008 she began her blog, Quirky Cooking, to share the recipes she was developing. In May 2014 she published her best-selling Quirky Cooking cookbook with Thermomix in Australia, and began to teach healthy cooking seminars in Australia and overseas.

However, in June 2014, Jo felt like she hit a brick wall. Despite all the work she’d done to heal her family, her son Isaac’s health (13 yrs old at the time) suddenly went downhill. He descended into anxiety and severe OCD, and Jo realised that they had really just been treading water with an allergy-friendly diet, and they urgently needed to address the root cause of the health problems they’d been facing over the years – poor gut health. They embarked on a journey to heal Isaac through the GAPS protocol (GAPS: Gut and Psychology Syndrome). Within weeks they saw massive changes, not only in Isaac’s health, but also in Jo’s health and the health of the whole family. Within a year, Isaac was off all medication and living a normal life, Jo’s health had completely turned around and she had gained a healthy weight, and the family no longer struggled with food reactions.

Jo shares their family’s journey and interviews parents and practitioners with experience in natural healing in her podcast ‘A Quirky Journey’, along with her co-host, whole food chef Fouad Kassab. In 2017, Jo and Fouad published a best-selling cookbook called ‘Life-Changing Food’, and together they hold seminars and cooking demonstrations around Australia to share the importance of eating a healing, whole food diet. Jo also has an online program called Quirky Cooking for Gut Health, to support people working through the GAPS Intro diet.

You can find Jo at Quirky Cooking (the blog), and on Facebook, Instagram, the Podcast, and the Gut Health Program. Jo and Fouad’s cookbook, Life-Changing Food, is available online here, or from many health food stores and bookstores.

To find out more about Primal Alternative and Helen Marshall please head here: www.primalalternative.com

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